


Corner-Elephants and the Colour Blue

by elwing_alcyone



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Afterlife, Banter, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-01
Updated: 2011-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 18:33:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwing_alcyone/pseuds/elwing_alcyone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just another fic about Davesprite and doomed!John meeting in a dream bubble. Sappy h/c like whoa, very minor implied spoilers for Act 6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Corner-Elephants and the Colour Blue

When he sees John, he seriously thinks about going to hide somewhere until the next dream bubble comes along.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to see John – in fact, seeing John is doing painful and wonderful things inside his chest – it’s just that shit is really way too complicated to deal with.

If it’s John from the alpha-timeline, Dave doesn’t think he can handle hanging out with the guy who’s going to go running back to the real Dave the moment the bubble bursts, or whatever dream bubbles do. On the other hand, if it’s John from Dave’s timeline, John who got himself killed and doomed their entire offshoot existence because a blind psychopath troll told him to... well, that’s a whole new and colourful bouquet of things Dave doesn’t want to get into. In fact he is probably fatally allergic to getting into those things.

And no matter which John he is, he’s still _John_ , not a bleeding feathery asshole of a broken-down game construct with one wing, no sword and a whole lot of suppressed existential angst. Frankly, it’s been a pretty rough day and Dave doesn’t think he can handle this right now.

Then John looks around and spots him, and John’s face says this isn’t complicated at all. John is just fucking happy to see him. What a jerk.

“Hey, Dave! Whoa, you are looking orange and kinda badass. What happened, dude?”

“Hey. Not much, just timeline stuff and self-prototyping.”

“Huh?”

Okay, so it’s his John. The John from his timeline, he corrects himself, the one who doesn’t know about Dave being the Knight of Time or any of that. More explanations Dave doesn’t want to give, so he just says, “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”

John accepts that cheerfully enough. He must be used to people looking different in the afterlife. “How long were you going to hover there watching me like a big creep anyway? Why didn’t you say something?”

Oh. Yeah, that. “Just getting my bearings. I’m still not used to this dream bubble shit.”

“Then it’s good you found me! I am basically like the expert on dream bubbles now. Let’s see, I went on a date with this troll called Vriska, only not really a date, but she explained the whole thing and took me to see a lot of places, which was really cool! Did you know the trolls really are aliens? They weren’t lying about that. They’re grey and have horns! Then she wandered off to talk to this guy she killed or something, and I met up with this other troll dude who sweated a lot, and we talked about mangrit and the colour blue, I don’t know, he was a bit odd. It turned out he wanted some advice about girls, so I told him about a few movies he could watch for ideas. I recommended _Hitch_ as a joke, but I think he took me seriously. Then there were... a whole bunch more people, I’ll tell you about them all at some point. Oh, and I met my Nanna from the future! How weird is that! She was totally awesome, by the way.”

“No kidding.”

“Nope!”

“So I guess you’re like my tour guide now. You gonna show me the sights or what?”

“Haha, I think this is actually your scene. This is your house, right?” He gestures around, and he’s right; this is the roof of Dave’s building, and Houston is patchworked around them with bits and pieces of other places, streets of glowing lava and skyscrapers made of scaffolding, incongruous under a hazy summer sky.

“Huh, looks like it.”

“Well, are you going to take me around and tell me stuff about your childhood? That seems to be something people do a lot in dream bubbles.”

“Nah.” He swings down onto the edge of the roof next to John. “Don’t feel like it. Let’s just chill here.”

“Okay! By the way, you don’t have to look like that. I mean, if you want to that is cool. You do look pretty badass! You look sort of like Ben Affleck in _Dogma_ when he got his wings shot off. But if you want to look like normal Dave again you can do that too.”

“Do not compare me to Ben Affleck. Find a Ben Stiller character with wings or shut the fuck up.”

John grins. “Oh man, I can’t believe you’re really wearing those stupid Stiller shades I got you for your birthday.”

“I told you. The shades are awesome and I’m wearing them ironically.”

“How do you even wear something ironically? I mean, I’m seeing you doing it, but I still don’t get how it’s any different from wearing something, you know, in the normal way.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t fucking expect you to get it.” Dave can feel himself relaxing. He was stupid to get so worked up about this. It’s just him and John, chilling and talking crap like they’ve always done, and there’s nothing awkward about it. The awkward shit doesn’t have to come up at all. They’ve got the sun on their backs, a breeze that almost feels fresh up here, warm concrete to sit on, and all the time there is. It’s going to be nice. There is no elephant in the room. They weren’t using that corner anyway.

No sooner has he thought it than John goes quiet, worrying at his lip and staring off into the distance.

“I guess I do know how come you’re a sprite,” he says reluctantly. “Vriska told me what happened to our timeline after I died. Not all the details, but I could figure it out. I really screwed things up for you guys, didn’t I?”

There are clouds on the horizon, dark and boiling ones lit from beneath by a sullen red glow. Dave remembers meteors, lots of meteors. He remembers black rivers catching fire. He remembers blood. He remembers a hell of a lot, suddenly, and doesn’t want to.

“Yeah, you landed us in the shit, pretty much, but it was always meant to happen, so, you know, whatever. Can we not talk about it?”

John looks downcast. “That’s fine, if you don’t want to. I was just... I’ve really been hoping I would get to find you, the you from my timeline, I mean, and say I’m sorry. And also thank you for getting my back like you said you would, even if it ended up being a different me.”

Oh, Christ, not the birthday letter, that stupid fucking sappy thing. Dave had to give it to his Bro to mail, because otherwise he would never have had the nerve; he would have held onto the box like a useless cowardly douche until John’s birthday was over. He kind of wishes he had now. Every time he thinks about what he wrote he feels like the worst fucking idiot.

“John, I just really... really... don’t want to talk about that.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

The wind is hot and smells like smoke. John looks miserable, like he thinks this means Dave hasn’t forgiven him or something. Speaking of idiocy.

“Dave?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m really glad to see you.”

“Shit. You just got done raving about all your great new friends.” That comes out sounding way too bitter. Poker-face, damn it. Think before speaking.

“Well,” John says, “I have made a lot of friends. And they are great! I hope you’ll get to meet them too! But...”

“But I’m cooler than any of them. It’s okay, you can say it. It’s just what everyone knows.” That’s more like it. Conversation salvaged. Ass-pats all round.

John smiles tentatively, and Dave’s stomach hurts in a way that has nothing to do with festering sword wounds.

“Yeah, that is totally it, man, I just wanted to take lessons in cool at the feet of the master. That is so a thing I’m interested in! You got me!”

If the conversation has been salvaged, why are those thunderheads still building, why is the city still going up in flames? Some asshole has dropped some sick fires and now he can’t put them out. How completely hilarious.

Okay, Dave is kind of freaking the fuck out. His mouth is running, something stupid about how cool can’t be taught and even if it could John does not strike him as an apt fucking pupil, but his brain is crackling with hectic fire and he’s starting to think he was right the first time, he really can’t deal with this. His eyes and the back of his throat are burning. From the smoke, sure.

“Dave?” John interrupts him.

“Yeah.”

“It’s okay, you know.”

“What is.”

“Everything.”

Dave doesn’t bother answering that, it’s so self-evidently wrong and fucking stupid.

“I feel like maybe you’re still looking like bird Dave because you don’t get that all that’s done now. And tell me if I’m out of line, but I think you’re also doing that because you want to upset me a little.”

“You’re out of line,” Dave says flatly.

“Okay, well, sorry if I was. I’m not trying to corner you.”

“What are you trying to do, dude? All I’m hearing is a lot of pointless fussing and meddling, trying to make like something’s wrong, when I’m over here chill as a skinny-dipper on New Year’s Eve.”

“You’re crying, Dave.”

“I am fucking _not_.” He wants to say, it’s the smoke, stupid. He wants John to stop goddamn looking at him. He wants most of all to be out of here, pchooo, good fucking bye to all this bullshit. He is about ten seconds from a seriously uncool outburst and he doesn’t want to be around when it happens.

John doesn’t say anything, he just wraps his arms around Dave and holds him in a sideways embrace which is awkward but really tight. Dave feels like howling. He doesn’t, of course. But he feels like it. John is being so careful to avoid the bloody stump of his wing and the bandaged wound in his abdomen, even though none of that shit really hurts any more, and where does he get off being so fucking kind all the time? If it were anyone else, Dave might think he was doing it out of sheer malice. Fuck John Egbert and his skinny elbows and scandalous insistence on being the best person in the universe at any given moment. Who told him he could get away with that?

Dave closes his eyes and pretends he’s not hugging John as fiercely as John’s hugging him. Behind his eyelids everything is red and it’s exhausting.

“So, uh,” John says again, his words muffled against Dave’s shoulder, “do you maybe want to try not being bird Dave for a while?”

“No, fuck you, I’m going to be Mister Orange Creamsicles forever.”

“Orange creamsicles?”

“Forget it.” Now is so not the time to discuss Terezi. “Anyway, I thought you said I looked badass.”

“Well, you do. But it is also kind of a standing reminder of how I fucked up and got everyone killed.”

Part of Dave – the asshole part – wants to say, _Tough shit, that’s what you did, take a good long look and learn to deal._ But even the asshole part of him doesn’t want to hurt John, not really. He’s just not sure if he’s ready to let go of the Davesprite identity and everything it represents. Without it he’s just another dead Dave. How’s that for irony?

“Maybe it’s not about you, maybe I just like having wings. A wing. Maybe I just really like spriteform. I mean, check out this awesome ghost tail thing. Did you think of that?”

John lets go of Dave and shrugs, rubbing his nose and sniffling a bit as he sits back. “I’m just saying.” He huffs out a laugh. “I guess with the blood and all you look a bit like an orange Slimer.”

“Okay, again, fuck you, I’m not as fat as Slimer.” He scrubs at his face with his hands, jams his shades back in place and feels a little better. The scenery has changed; they’re still on the roof, but now the building is surrounded by some kind of parkland, and the fire-colour is just the trees changing their leaves for fall. No flaming cherry apeshit apocalypse here, just pastoral tranquility as far as the eye can see. This must be John’s area. “Also. Wings. Slimer doesn’t have wings. In fact, you know the fuck what, I look nothing like that grinning neon turd with arms, what the hell. Find better stuff to compare me to.”

“I met this one troll, who wasn’t actually dead, or maybe used to be dead, or... anyway, she said she used to be a sprite too, she self-prototyped after tier-one prototyping with this frog statue, and she used to keep ribbiting. She couldn’t help it, it was some sort of involuntary, uh, reflex, I guess. Do you speak crow now?”

“You’re just aiming to ask all the questions that make this sound embarrassing instead of ridiculously cool, aren’t you?”

“Maybe you could be, like, a mermaid. A mermaid angel or something. That would be a great movie if someone wrote it!”

“No, dude, stop. Just...” His thoughts abruptly swerve, hit the central reservation, crumple like an empty cola can and explode spectacularly, engulfing his eloquence in a devastating fireball of what the fuck. “Uh. John.”

“Yes?”

“You’re kind of. Holding my hand.”

John laughs nervously. “I guess so. Do you mind?”

“No, I just wanted to make sure that was what you meant to do, not some kind of epileptic spasm or something.”

“First, that is not how epilepsy works, and second, I don’t have epilepsy, Dave!”

“What’s the name of the thing where you accidentally do stupid shit all the time and your friends have to run around making sure you don’t hurt yourself?”

“Gosh, I don’t know, don’t you remember what they called it when they diagnosed you?” He glances over at Dave and grins.

“What?”

“You’re smiling.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay, whatever!”

“So tell me more about how you’re spending eternity becoming best friends with everyone you meet and spreading bad Earth culture throughout the afterlife,” Dave says, feeling the need to make up for being such a petulant ass earlier. “What was up with the blue dude?”

“Who, Equius?”

“Yeah, mangrit and the colour blue.”

“Oh, boy. I am pretty sure he talked to some version of you at some point, because he kept asking about slam poetry to start off with. And going on about social hierarchies and being STRONG. Actually... you know what, Dave? Every troll I meet seems to have encountered you in some form or another and been traumatised by the experience. Vriska is the only one who was sensible enough to choose me from the start.”

“Sensible? Haha. You don’t even want to know the things I know about Vriska.”

While John talks, Dave looks up at the sky, which isn’t the hazy chrome of summer in Houston, but a deep, interminable blue, unmarred by clouds or contrails or any kind of impending armageddon.

He’s pretty sure that if you had one and wanted to free some space up, you could drown a fucking elephant in that sky and no one would even notice.

**Author's Note:**

> Just in case anyone was wondering how Jane and John could have met in a dream bubble, I'm imagining this taking place post-canon, and I am relentlessly hopeful, so I intended to imply future God Tier Jane. Woohoo!


End file.
